1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an improved type of lawn mower, and more specifically, to lawn mowers of the type having multiple blades for the purpose of rapidly cutting areas of grass and having self-contained mechanical devices to prevent the accumulation of long or damp grass clippings within the cutting blade housings.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past, most gasoline or electrically driven lawn mowers were built incorporating the use of one cutting blade rotatably mounted in a single housing. These mowers were manually pushed or controlled to cut a relatively narrow path in a grass area thereby requiring many passes to complete a cutting job.
These prior art type mowers exhibited the tendency to accumulate clippings within the cutting blade housing when cutting long or slightly damp grass. This often required the manual removal of the accumulation of grass clippings to avoid restricting the rotation of the cutting blade or to permit ejection of the clippings through the outlet of the housing portion located around the cutting blade to prevent the choking off or stopping of the blade rotation. Thus, a great deal of time was wasted in stopping the mower to remove the clippings and then restarting the mower after clipping removal. Additionally, it was very difficult to perform mowing jobs in the early morning hours when the grass was usually somewhat damp thereby reducing the daylight time available for cutting grass.
One improvement in this type of prior art mower was introduced incorporating the use of a tractor driven lawn mower comprised of a larger cutting blade. While a wider path was cut by the larger cutting blade, the problem of grass clippings accumulating within the cutting blade housing and restricting the cutting blade rotation was not alleviated, due to the increased volume of grass clippings caused by the cutting of the wider path. Furthermore, for many relatively small area grass cutting jobs, the use of a tractor driven mower was impractical.
The need existed for a relatively small lawn mower that could be manually controlled or operated and that would not only cut a relatively wide path through long or damp grass, but would also facilitate the continuous removal of the grass clippings from within the cutting blade housing. The result would be to significantly reduce labor because of decreased cutting time and to further reduce the inherently dangerous task of manually freeing a restricted rotating cutting blade.